Hello, I am a virgin here and I am looking for some advice.

We have recently booked a holiday to Greece through Cooperative Travel in the UK. My mother has booked a holiday for the full family (kids and grand-kids) and she has spent quite a bit. I will put a timeline of what happened below instead of writing a wall of text:

Anyway, she was looking for package holidays in travel agents and found a holiday in Thomas Cook and was given a printed quote of £7,380.

She took this quote to Cooperative travel and showed it to them. The travel agent looked into it and eventually told her she could knock £300 off the price of the holiday. This, however, would mean none of the extras which Thomas Cook were offering such as priority boarding, room upgrades, in-flight meals etc.

We booked the holiday through Cooperative and went away very happy.

Two days later we noticed that the name of the hotel on the booking confirmation was different from the brochure. ("Porto Bello Beach" as opposed to "Porto Bello Royal"). On investigation it emegred that we had been booked into the wrong hotel which was 4* instead of the 5* we had wanted to visit.

My mother then reattended the travel agent and pointed this out. They told her it would cost an extra £1000 to change the hotel to the one she wanted. She was not happy (crying in the shop) and was told they would look into it for her and tell her the next day.

The next day they told her that there was nothing they could do and they would have to pay the extra money as they had signed the confirmation for the wrong hotel (bear in mind, only 1 word woud be different on the whole contract). This despite the fact that she had given them the quote from the other place which they promised to beat and twice pointed it out to the staff member to make sure she had the correct resort.

Furthermore, the manage of the shop stated that the money they would have to pay had gone up from £1,000 to £1,800 BUT if she paid the difference there and then they would just take £1,000 as a gesture of good will....whatever! Anyway, my mother paid the money but told the manager that she was very unhappy as she had basically been accused of being a liar, this after the manager had said that she had not shown the staff member a quote or the brochure thus the mistake was all my mothers. The branch told my mother she would speak to "head office" and see what she could do.

Finally, the branch manager has spoken to my mother today and told her that there is nothing else they can do and she has lost the money. Furthermore she has refused to give a refund in full.

This has left a bitter taste in our mouths as we have ended up paying £700 extra for a holiday when they told us we could have saved £300.

My question is this: what more can we do to progress this? What advise can you give for us or are we screwed?

Thank you in advance and sorry for the wall of text.